At The ASCEND Conference In Washington On May 19, Isaacman Delivered The Clearest Statement Yet Of The Stakes Of The New Space Race And Announced That Artemis Must Move Faster
According to SpaceNews, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman warned a space industry audience at the ASCEND conference on May 19 that the next people to fly around the Moon would be Chinese. “The next time the world tunes in to watch astronauts fly around the moon, which will likely be sometime in 2027, they will be taikonauts, and America will no longer be the exclusive power to send humans into the lunar environment,” he said.
While Isaacman has frequently discussed a race with China to be the next to land humans on the Moon, this was one of the first times he predicted a 2027 Chinese crewed circumlunar mission, that too in the ASCEND conference. He repeated the comments later in the day at an industry reception. China has not publicly announced plans for such a mission, which, as Isaacman described it, would likely be similar to NASA’s Artemis 2 mission in April.
The assertion in the ASCEND conference is notable because it goes further than any public Chinese announcement has gone. As of February 2026, CMSA confirmed that development of the three primary lunar mission systems; the Long March-10 carrier rocket, the Mengzhou crewed spacecraft, and the Lanyue crewed lunar lander is advancing smoothly, with a crewed lunar landing targeted before 2030.
In the same February statement, CMSA noted that the Mengzhou spacecraft had already completed its first uncrewed test flight, demonstrating the abort system and spacecraft separation sequence. Those are flight hardware milestones, not a roadmap slide. Isaacman is reading the hardware signals and projecting a 2027 circumlunar date that China has not itself confirmed.
Isaacman had one main message at the ASCEND conference: NASA cannot afford to move slowly anymore. He stressed NASA must act with urgency if the United States wants to stay ahead in the new space race, especially against China.
He described NASA as “a fundamentally different agency” that plans to move quickly to return astronauts to the Moon, build a permanent lunar base, and unlock what he called the “economic potential” of the lunar environment.
In the ASCEND conference, Isaacman continued to characterize the United States and China as being in a modern-day space race akin to the 1960s competition with the Soviet Union, and, like the 1960s, America must win. The United States is the only country that has ever sent people to circle around, orbit, or land on the Moon.
All crewed missions to fly around, orbit or land on the Moon; nine Apollo missions from 1968 to 1972 and Artemis 2 in April 2026 have been flown by NASA.
Since his December swearing in, Isaacman has led efforts to step up the Artemis program’s launch cadence. Artemis III is now slated to demonstrate a crewed Orion capsule rendezvous and docking with SpaceX and Blue Origin Human Landing Systems in Earth orbit in 2027, followed by one and possibly two Artemis IV lunar landings with astronauts in 2028.
Isaacman proposed adding another Artemis mission in 2027, similar to Apollo 9, where astronauts tested systems before attempting a landing. NASA plans to begin nearly monthly lunar landings starting in early 2027, and Isaacman admitted that failures will happen, but NASA must learn from them rather than fear them.
After 2030, China’s program trajectory leads to a permanent lunar base, to be constructed in cooperation with Russia, with a nuclear reactor on the surface as a power source; a capability the US has no current equivalent program to match on that timeline.
The space race framing serves a political purpose as much as a strategic one. Isaacman used the same logic to justify restructuring Artemis; cancelling the lunar Gateway, accelerating robotic lander cadence and pivoting Artemis 3 from a landing attempt to a systems test in low Earth orbit. Whether China performs a circumlunar mission in 2027 or not, the urgency Isaacman is projecting in the ASCEND conference is already reshaping how NASA is organised, funded and prioritised.
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